How Do Corporate Credit Rating Agencies Operate?

As with the consumer credit, there are dedicated agencies for corporate credit ratings too. Although corporate credit rating agencies do a somewhat similar work, the analytical methodology adopted by them and the coverage hugely varies in comparison to consumer credit rating agencies'. This is because the corporate credit rating agencies operate in various countries across the globe. In addition to the basic financial factors, they have to build the economic scenario and political stability of the country to which a corporation or its debt instrument belongs, into the ratings.

Consider this example. Although a corporation is doing well in financial terms, the overall market economy to which the corporation belongs and political set up may not be stable. Thus these two factors carry a lot of weight age in the corporate credit ratings. Following is the list of some respected corporate credit rating agencies of long standing.

For detailed information on how the ratings are placed on corporations you may please refer here.

Corporate Credit Rating Agencies

There are a number of corporate credit rating agencies and some of them are as follows

Moody's Corporation

This is one of the highly respected sources of credit analysis and risk rating services in the world. Moody's operate around the globe (in over 100 countries) with close to 170,000 securities under their analysis. Moody's rate, track and analyze more than $35 trillion worth of debt.

Standard and Poor's

A division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc is a preeminent provider of services such as credit ratings and global services. Who doesn't know of their highly recognized S&P500®, a financial market index services?

The Dun & Bradstreet Corp

This is perhaps best known by its acronym D&B. It is still better known for their D-U-N-S numbers obtained by more than 2.7 million US corporations. D&B offers major services such as risk management, sales and supply management amongst others.

Fitch IBCA

It is another of the highly ranked corporate credit ratings company. Like its peer group, Fitch corporate credit ratings provide information to help investors determine associated risks when investing in a particular instrument or a company. Their services extend to Europe, UK and Americas.

You can get Free Corporate Credit Rating advice from corporate credit rating agencies after you sign up with them. Credit ratings agencies provide a cost free corporate credit rating access in a limited fashion unless you are a paid subscriber.